I don't know about the rest, but hubby and I never got "Island Fever", although we knew many who did. I think a lot of it is how you feel about water. We did wind up leaving because my husband's parents had problems and it got expensive to fly to the mainland that often. AND it was expensive to live there. But if we didn't want to be in Mililani, we got in the car to go to Kailua. If we didn't want to be on Oahu (at least once a year) we went to another island. Inter-island flights/car rental combos were relatively reasonable. I didn't like the school system (I didn't have kids, but worked in military recruiting and saw some pretty terrible results of the public school system there at the time). Unless a lot has changed, or we were wealthier, if I had kids I'd not have even considered staying there. But being on an Island was fun and I could easily have stayed there (and still have a few friends). There is so much cultural diversity and the best food of anywhere I've lived.